Kyle had learned quite a lot after talking to Theodor.
If he wanted to survive, he needed to become a Transcendent.
In the past, this goal had seemed almost impossible.
How could anyone become this powerful?
How would one even go about achieving that?
But now, Kyle actually knew what he needed.
Even more, he was in contact with someone who had a realistic chance of one day becoming a Transcendent.
While Transcendents were infinitely far away, the Chief was not that far away.
'I need to become as powerful as the Chief,' he thought.
'Inside his level, the Chief is probably the most powerful person in the Third Realm, and the people in the Third Realm are all made up of the most powerful people of the Second Realm.'
'My competitors are not the average people in the Second Realm.'
'My competitors are the top 1000, and I am somewhere in there.'
'I need to become number one.'
Kyle looked at the rune on his pants.
'My power is my own.'
'This is not a gamble.'
'If I lose, it's not because I got unlucky.'
'If I lose, it's because I haven't put in enough effort.'
'This is not RNG.'
'It's training and skill.'
'I need to maximize my power.'
'And when it's maximized, I need to gain more experience.'
'I already have a guy inside my head who knows basically everything.'
'I have an Aristocrat's Body.'
'I have the Predator's Being.'
'My starting position is as high as it gets.'
'I am already the lucky one. My competitors are the unlucky ones.'
'My RNG has rolled a perfect 100.'
'If I fail to become a Transcendent, it will be on me.'
Kyle sighed.
'Sounds like a ton of work, but as long as it is something within my control, I should be able to deal with it.'
'Huh, I'm actually taking responsibility. Who woulda thought that the bored and lazy cool-guy from high school would one day become a proper adult?'
'I guess I'm an adult now.'
'I have to commit adultery now. Adult is in the name, so it is something that adults have to do.'
Kyle snickered at his joke.
Then, he pulled his hammer over his shoulders.
"Boss, I'm going to be one-in-a-million," Kyle said with a confident smirk.
Surprisingly, Kyle didn't feel any annoyance or disregard from Theodor.
He had expected that Theodor would snort.
You don't know what that means.
You? Forget it!
You have no idea what you're talking about, imbecile.
Kyle had expected such an answer.
"That's the right mindset… inheritor. "
Kyle blinked a couple of times.
Yet, Kyle didn't answer Theodor.
His smirk just widened and became more confident.
'If I highlight his new tone, he will revert to being an insufferable ass.'
After his proclamation, Kyle focused on the other Enchantments.
The things he was doing every day hadn't changed, but the goal was different.
For some reason, comprehending the other Enchantments was not as difficult anymore.
It was like focusing had become easier.
It took Kyle about one more month to include the other two Enchantments into his armor.
Fire's Power and Metal's Tempering.
The rune for Fire's Power was in Kyle's gauntlets.
Fire's Power doubled Kyle's offensive power.
Whenever he attacked, the Ether inside the attack would be refined to be about double as effective.
But wait, wouldn't Wind's Speed be strictly better than Fire's Power according to this explanation?
Force was mass times acceleration, right? So, if Wind's Speed increased the acceleration, wouldn't it do the same thing as Fire's Power while also increasing Kyle's speed?
The answer was, yes, kind of.
In a strict sense, Wind's Speed was superior to Fire's Power.
However, there was a difference in terms of what it affected.
Fire's Power increased the quality of Ether, which was a hidden addition to the age-old formula of force equals mass times acceleration.
Earth didn't have Ether, which was why Ether wasn't messing with their perfect physical formulas.
But here, Ether was present, and it changed physics.
A more appropriate formula in this world would be force equals (mass plus Ether) times acceleration.
The end result was the same number for Wind's Speed and Fire's Power.
However, Wind's Speed's strengthening aspect was much easier to replace.
There were a bunch of enchantments that could increase someone's speed, and they didn't stack.
One could only use one for this aspect.
There were also a bunch of Enchantments to increase the mass of an object.
Yet, there were extremely few that increased the Ether.
This was a rare boost, which was why it was considered just as good as Wind's Speed.
Meanwhile, Metal's Tempering worked on the mass aspect without putting more burden on weight.
Yes, it sounded strange that one could double the mass of something without increasing the weight, but that was what made Ether so magical.
Due to the addition of temporary mass, the hammer could not only unleash more power but also became much denser and harder.
With all three Enchantments active, Kyle's offensive power was boosted a lot.
Here comes math:
f=force
m=mass
a=acceleration
eth=Ether
Base formula:
(m eth)*a=f
Formula with all Enchantments:
(2m 2eth)*2a=f
Let's assume m, eth, and a are all 5.
Base formula:
(5 5)*5=50
Formula with all Enchantments:
(2*5 2*5)*2*5=200
This meant Kyle's attacking power had quadrupled.
How many levels was that in terms of Realm?
About one.
But wait, didn't a level only increase the power by 2 to 2.2 times?
Shouldn't it be two levels?
Nope.
Basically, everything was increased by a factor of two.
This meant, in terms of force, someone one level higher had between four and five times more.
This was why jumping a level was not easy.
All of these Enchantments only gave Kyle one level of advantage and only for his physical body.
His mind was not twice as fast.
His Soul was not twice as strong.
His Center did not have twice the Ether.
Just his body was essentially a level higher.
Jumping a level was not easy.
In fact, it was very rare.
Only one in a thousand could do that.
Kyle could also do that.
However, Kyle could only do that because of his Aristocrat's Body, while most of the others did that without an Aristocrat's Body.
This was the true difference between Kyle and the others in the top 1,000.
He had quite a way to go.
"Boss," Kyle said as he got used to keeping all three Enchantments active at the same time. "I'm going to visit Sulfur and Granite."
Theodor's emotions didn't seem to change. "It will be dangerous. There are bound to be Peak Ferocious Beasts. Can you kill one of those?"
"I'm not sure," Kyle said.
"Are you going to go regardless?" Theodor asked.
"Yes," Kyle answered after a sigh.
"Good."
"That's how it's supposed to be."
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